The fact that maternity units throughout the country – most notably in the Greater Lisbon area – have not been working properly for years – seeing more and more newborns delivered in ambulances (searching for a unit that is operational) has nothing to do with the recent deaths of two babies.
Álvaro Almeida, the executive director of the SNS state health service, stuck to his guns today, even after being presented, yet again with the two tragic scenarios.
Newborn death number one concerned the practically full-term pregnancy of a 37-year-old woman whose other babies had been born large. This time round, the woman visited FIVE different hospitals complaining of severe abdominal pains, before the decision was made to induce her – by which time, nothing could be done to save her daughter.
Newborn death number two came shortly after, again in the Greater Lisbon area: a 31-year-old woman with a history of placental abruption endured a four-hour ordeal trying to reach a maternity unit that was open. In the end, firefighters had to travel ‘more than an hour’ to Cascais, by which time, the fetus was dead…
Lusa’s account of Álvaro Almeida’s questioning today by MPs on the parliamentary health committee made no mention of the young woman who ended up delivering her baby in the street (because she was told there were no ambulances available to collect her.) But it does explain that Mr Almeida refused to see any connections between the failures in providing timely healthcare, and the deaths of two infants.
The stop-start nature of maternity units is “very worrying”, he conceded – and the two deaths “expose multiple and recurring failings” – but they are the result of “years of disinvestment in the SNS”, he stressed, rather than any failings in current SNS management.
“How many more tragic cases must occur before we recognise that (the country’s) hospital referral network is completely inadequate?” he was asked.
There appears to have been no direct answer.
Lusa’s reports states: “In response, the executive director of the SNS stated that “there is no connection between the closure of emergency rooms” and the death of the two babies, but acknowledged that “all these events are unfortunate and regrettable.”
This is very much the same as recent insistence, again by Álvaro Almeida, that there is also ‘no connection between closure of maternity units, and the increasing numbers of babies being born in ambulances’.
Mr Almeida suggests that the stories presented in the press (and by the women who lost their babies/ had them in ambulances or delivered on the pavement) involved a “set of factual inaccuracies.”
In the case of the 31-week pregnant woman, Almeida explained that the woman’s history meant that the closest hospitals which could have taken her, did not have the ‘differentiated perinatal support’ that she needed, hence the decision to transport her to Cascais, which he argued “during the early hours of the morning” would not take an hour to reach, but more like 10-15 minutes…
“It is highly unlikely that the 10 or 15 minutes of additional transportation, accompanied by a doctor, were the cause of this outcome,” he said.
Regarding the first case of a woman whose baby was practically full term – yet she was not induced for days due to different hospitals sending her home – Almeida stated that “in every hospital she went to (the woman was treated) as she should have been.”
“Once again, there is no relationship between the closure of the emergency room and the fatal outcome,” he said.
“In the first case, we don’t know whether those 10 minutes made a difference or not. It is highly unlikely, but we don’t know. In the second, we are certain it wasn’t because the emergency room was closed.”
source material: LUSA
